BofA’s shoddy mortgage service; London bankers expect big bonuses

Here’s your one-stop shop for all the banking news you missed this weekend. Among the highlights: The tear-out-your-hair frustration of trying to get a mortgage modified at Bank of America, and the really, really big expectations of London bankers waiting for their bonuses.

Here’s more:

•Mortgage purgatory: Those accusations about shoddy and frustrating service for struggling homeowners haven’t gone away, they were just out of the headlines for a while. Bloomberg News is out with a hard-hitting story on Bank of America Corp.’s
/quotes/zigman/190927/delayed/quotes/nls/bacBAC efforts (or lack of effort) to help customers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments. As Bloomberg reports, the bank stalled with repeated requests for paperwork, sent conflicting responses to regulators and customers, and put in charge old hands from Countrywide, a less-than-sparkling visage of mortgage probity. “Everyone knew that we weren’t helping people,”says one former employee of a BofA contractor.

Bloomberg

•Really great expectations: Forget cries from shareholders, the government, and a pretty miffed general public to scale back banker pay. Senior bankers in London are expecting a 44% jump in their bonuses this year, says financial recruiting firm Astbury Marsden, to what in U.S. terms would amount to more than $272,000 from about $189,000 a year ago. Astbury Marsden, for its part, says that some bankers are going to be disappointed.

•Resting their cases: The trial of a portfolio manager at hedge fund SAC Capital, accused by the government of insider trading, could go to a jury as early as Monday afternoon.

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